RE: The Double Spending Problem on Steemit
Very cool discussion.
I do find a slight possible flaw in your thinking when comparing to the bitcoin blockchain. The bitcoin blockchain has a set amount of rewards created per block. Replaying a block creation would change the inflation rate of the currency itself which would be a very serious thing. In this DPOS system, the 3 second block production is trustworthy and unchanged, regardless of how many double spends of content happen. To me, that's an important distinction. To me, there are two levels. The first level creates the token and that's the really important one that should not be possible to "double spend" or it changes the fundamental economics of the token. On a second layer, we have the proof of brain distribution of the rewards pool. Ideally, yes, we want to avoid double spends here as well, but I don't think it's at the same level of concern as a block production which creates new tokens out of nothing.
As I was reading through this, I was reminded of a post I voted for recently which was a copy of a post which was vendetta flagged to $0 by a whale. It was a valuable post (IMO) and deserved a portion of the rewards pool and since the original version was flagged to $0 for irrational reasons (IMO), I was happy to vote it up. To me, it's an example of how all value is subjective. In that case, I was happy to support it because the author disclosed the duplication (and the reasons for it) and the post was personally valuable to me.
That reminds me of a post I did last year: Why You Should Care About Plagiarism and Fair Use. From that perspective, it's about determining who in the community is a good, trustworthy actor, and who is not. If someone republishes super valuable content, I'm okay with rewarding it if it's new for me and I know this person isn't purposely trying to scam anyone such as reposting something which was supposed to be exclusive content elsewhere.
From a certain perspective, every time a movie plays in the theater, they are double spending the original work. It's not about some labor theory of value, more about who is willing to subjectively assign a value to the exchange in that moment and pay for it.
Good analysis on the blockchain comparison, and you are right: in this sense it's not creating new tokens, it's purely about the distribution. The creation is secure, but the ethical dilemma remains.
Not exactly. You paid for the ticket (I hope) and some of the money goes to the people who created it. You are an informed purchaser: you know that you are buying something meant for mass consumption and that other people are going to view it.
The example that resonates with me more is the artwork example. If you create a painting, and sell it to someone under the assumption that it was the only painting of it's kind, the purchaser would be pretty unhappy if they find out that you are actually mass producing the exact same painting. The purchaser would feel cheated (and rightly so) as they thought the value that they bought was unique.
Most of my point in this post boils down to the problem of being an informed purchaser, or an informed voter. You may change your voting behaviour if you knew it was a copy paste job, or if it was a steemit exclusive.
I agree fully. The issue is fraud. If people are acting fraudulently, that lowers value for the whole network.